Day Zero - Rest Day in Addis Ababa

The rest day was a bit more frantic than I would have liked. The
highpoint was definitely the buffet breakfast at the Sheraton. Pretty
must the same as a hotel in not-Africa, except the bacon was beef
bacon. Kind of wrong. We spent a good three and a half hours sitting
around eating food and drinking juice and macciattos. And using their
shiny, clean facilities.

After that, I tried tracking down my DHL package. I had a lot of
trouble with this at first because all I had was the original Canberra
-> Khartoum tracking number, not the Khartoum -> Addis number. And for
some reason, the package was addressed to the hotel, not to me. So
after a few dud phone calls to DHL from the hotel lobby I gave up and
went back to camp to clean my bike and do my washing.

While I was doing that, Paul, one of the TDA guys, got a hold of the
new tracking number. All I had to do then was jump in a taxi to the
closest DHL office and get them to check which office my package was
at. Turns out it was in the head office of Addis, so back in the taxi
to head out there.

Out there, the lady just opened a cupboard labelled "Africa" and the
_only_ package in there was my one! Next time I will know to just say
"Can you look in the cupboard and see if you have a package in there?"
Instead of frisking around with tracking numbers and what not.

It was kind of cool driving around town in a taxi. To start with, he
charged 50 birr to go from the campground to the closest DHL office.
That only took 5 minutes, so it was a bit of a rip off. Then it was
150 to go to the main DHL office and go back to Friendship City, a
shopping centre we saw. Then it was 250 to go to the main DHL office,
back to Friendship City, wait an hour for us to finish, then go to a
bookstore, then go back to the campground. Much more reasonable.
Though the night before, we paid 250 to go all the way out to the
Korean hospital, wait three hours then come back.

We also saw a bunch of the city. The technique of using wooden
scaffolding isn't limited to rural areas. Even buildings that are ten
or more stories high are built with the wooden scaffold. I dunno if
they do all the concrete skeleton by eye as well, but by the look of
some of the bridges, I'd say that some of it was.

Anyways, I now have some more bibs and chamois cream and Stuart has
his CO2 adapter as well. Happy days. One of the riders, Tony, went
home for a week between Gondor and Addis. He brought a set of Schwalbe
Marathon Durano 25s back for me. They are a crazy thin set of tires.
Compared to normal mountain bike tries, or even the 32s that I've been
running, they look ridiculous.